White Houses
by easternepiphany
Summary: "Sorry, Rose. But you know this just confirms our greatness, right? I've never seen anyone destroy a house like this before."


**Standard disclaimers apply.**

_For Heidi._**  
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As the house crumbles to the ground, it takes them a moment to realize what is going on. But when dust and plaster begin to fall on top of them, they stare at each other with wide eyes and shocked expressions. Rosalie opens and closes her mouth a few times before Emmett bursts into laughter, loud, deep chuckles echoing along with the bangs of the walls hitting the floor.

"We broke the house," he gasps.

She slaps his chest but she's fighting the corners of her mouth to keep from turning up. "This is so embarrassing." She's always been good at holding back her smiles and her laughs but there is something about Emmett Cullen that takes this ability away entirely. She bites her lip but it's no use and the laughter escapes anyway. She collapses into even harder giggles when she catches sight of Emmett's hair: it is almost completely white from the debris.

Under any other circumstance, Rosalie might have a different reaction to the sight of Emmett with gray hair and eyebrows. Her mind might float to her ever-present fantasy of the two of them sitting on a back porch somewhere, grandchildren running around in the backyard. She might feel that hollow ache in her bones.

But Rosalie is older and smarter than she was the first time and she would not have stood up at that alter wearing that dress if Emmett didn't make that ache go away. She will still long for the life that she could have led, but this man will always be more than she could ever ask for.

There is another crack and Rosalie shrieks. Emmett drapes his body over hers and begins laughing again as more pieces of wall hit his back. "Esme is going to kill us," she says. The house is brand new – to them, anyway. It is a reconstructed servant's home, something small and private for just the two of them. It was a wedding gift from Carlisle and Esme, hand decorated by Esme herself.

And now it lay in ruins.

The two of them catch their breath and then Emmett stands up, tugging on Rosalie's hand so she does the same. He finds his clothes on the floor (trapped under a piece of a wall) and shakes the dust off of them. He slips on the pants and hands the shirt to Rosalie, who shrugs it over her shoulders and buttons it up quickly.

"What do we do now?" she asks.

The bed – a giant four-poster with much-too-soft linens – is lopsided, one of the posters completely broken off. There is a hole in the wall and Rosalie can see straight through to the bathroom on the other side. The wall adjacent to the bed is ripped in half, the ceiling above it torn, as if a large animal tried to claw its way through.

"We're going to brag about this for all of eternity, that's what we're going to do," Emmett says loudly. "You don't see Carlisle and Esme breaking houses, do you?"

"That's disgusting." Rosalie crinkles her nose and shakes her head. The last thing she wants is the mental image of her parents having sex.

Emmett pulls her close to him and brushes dust out of her hair. "Sorry, Rose. But you know this just confirms our greatness, right? I've _never_ seen anyone destroy a house like this before."

She rolls her eyes but stands on her tiptoes to press a kiss to his lips. "Well, I suppose we'll have to go back to the main house. We can't stay here." She slips her hand into his much larger one, lacing her fingers around his. They step through the rubble and emerge from the house, looking like survivors of some sort of disaster.

Emmett starts laughing again as he turns around to face the house. When it had been presented to them a few days before, it stood proud and white, the perfect home for the newly-married Emmett and Rosalie. Rosalie had been confident that this house would be good for them; it would be a place where all of her demons would go away and where she would finally be able to give all of herself to her new husband.

And now it sits destroyed, but Rosalie doesn't harbor the sadness that she expects. Her house lay in ruins but she and Emmett walk away, she realizes that the house is not what will make them last.


End file.
